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Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

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Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#131

Post by leetcrew »

arcticbull wrote: post #86
Sargos wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until our governmental system is overhauled to allow for more democracy and less powerful individuals then the citizens really don't bare much responsibility for the actions of our masters. I live in a gerrymandered district with no real way to vote for my preferences and it doesn't look like it will get better anytime soon.

I have a really hard time with that answer. In a democracy each individual is directly and personally responsible for their government. That's the power and the responsibility associated with picking your leadership. You get credit for the good and the blame for the bad. In an autocracy, it's murkier.

the gerrymandering is a really important issue. my city is split into n districts (where 10 I'm not arguing the city would be better off with more republicans in office, but it's a good example to show how even affluent people can be totally disenfranchised in a political system. no matter how effectively these people mobilize, they will never win an election, even at the most local level, in the foreseeable future.

Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#132

Post by ftfp »

arcticbull wrote: post #128
ftfp wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are just going to ignore the gerrymandering part of their comment then?

Yeah, that's true, gerrymandering is problematic and does stifle people's ability to express their political voice. Does gerrymandering make the US less of a democracy, then? I don't have an answer to that question, so curious your thoughts. You were definitely right to call me out on that.

I think it does, yes. Voting in a gerrymandered region is pretty much just maliciously cargo-culted democracy. It might look like people engaging in a democratic action on the surface, but it doesn't have any effect.

It reminds me of the 'literacy tests' given to black voters, back in the Jim Crow era. We're doing this to help them participate in our democracy, the racists would say. But the reality was in fact the complete opposite.

The structure of the political system itself matters too - for example, this concentration of so much power into a single person, that the US and other countries have with the presidential model, gives them some very autocratic attributes as well.

Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#133

Post by jessaustin »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #112
fit2rule wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Genocide is not happening. You won’t be taken seriously if you make such claims.

Why is it always brown people whose blood and bones are ground up in the gristmill of the American war machine? Doesn't that seem just a bit genocidal? Even in places like Latin America where the reptiles could choose among a variety of races as collaborators in their monstrous schemes, they somehow always ally with white people to kill indigenous people. This is going on right now in Bolivia, and Venezuela has had this potential for a long time, but historically one must take care to find an uncolored spot on the map. [0]

No one in this thread cares to "be taken seriously" by those who don't acknowledge recent history.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...

Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#134

Post by jessaustin »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #101
pftf wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting doesn't work for the most important issues, where human rights are being severely violated. It took a civil war for the end of slavery to begin in the US. It took decades of terrorism for the Irish to stop being as subjugated by the British in Northern Ireland. And so on. History indicates that what you really need in the US right now is some violent, direct action against those committing human rights atrocit…

This is a pretty disgusting thing to advocate.

This is America dude. If you don't like our Founding Fathers and you don't like the Union Army, you might consider relocating to some mythical land whose history isn't soaked in blood.

Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#135

Post by leetcrew »

arcticbull wrote: post #128
ftfp wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you are just going to ignore the gerrymandering part of their comment then?

Yeah, that's true, gerrymandering is problematic and does stifle people's ability to express their political voice. Does gerrymandering make the US less of a democracy, then? I don't have an answer to that question, so curious your thoughts. You were definitely right to call me out on that.

I don't think it makes it less of a democracy, per se. after all, officials are still elected through a public vote, and the gerrymandering is carried out by democratically elected leaders. tbh I'm not even sure how you would get rid of it. political boundaries have to be drawn somewhere to begin with, and sometimes they may need to move if the population shifts over time. I dunno how you could make the current party in power redraw the lines in a way in a way that's fair to the opposition.

I do think your claim about citizens in a democracy ultimately being responsible for the actions of their government is a bit much though, or at least not very useful. individual voters may have opposed the victor in the election, or they may have grudgingly voted them in to avoid an even worse candidate.

Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#136

Post by justanotheranon »

arcticbull wrote: post #86
Sargos wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until our governmental system is overhauled to allow for more democracy and less powerful individuals then the citizens really don't bare much responsibility for the actions of our masters. I live in a gerrymandered district with no real way to vote for my preferences and it doesn't look like it will get better anytime soon.

I have a really hard time with that answer. In a democracy each individual is directly and personally responsible for their government. That's the power and the responsibility associated with picking your leadership. You get credit for the good and the blame for the bad. In an autocracy, it's murkier.

America isn't a pure Democracy in the sense of Plato's Republic.

America is a Representative Democracy. we vote, but we are powerless to change what our Representatives do on our behalf.

by the way, this is really where the root idea of a "Deep State" existing comes from. We vote for Obama to close Gitmo, then he doesn't do it and we never know why. We never voted for illegal NSA domestic mass surveillance, yet here we are and it's normalized. We never voted for CIA renditions, black sites, torture and political assassinations, yet here we are. We never voted for the Federal Reserve to give trillions of dollars to the richest megabillionaires to park that wealth in real estate and price ordinary people out of affordable housing, yet here we are.

it's no longer a crazy conspiracy theory to look at the catastrophic effects of FedGov and how nothing ever improves and conclude the reason is because the govt we think we have is not really in control, but rather a secret State-Within-a-State is in control. a Shadow Govt, a permanent class of faceless bureaucrats wearing dark suits who operate the machinery of Govt and who flaunt the efforts of our elected Representatives and who ignore the will of the voters.

if there ever was an entity that called for extravagent levels of hyperviolence unseen in history to overthrow it, the Deep State is that entity.

Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#137

Post by justanotheranon »

pravda wrote: post #95
arcticbull wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Adams and George Washington believed a two-party state was a major threat to democracy, and it's pretty easy to see why. The reality is Democrats and Republicans are about 6 inches apart on every single major issue. Compare the platforms of the "left" and "right" here to other major democracies worldwide, and you'll see. Things are a little different with the current administration, but even that, the concrete p…

Gore Vidal pointed this out many years ago: "There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently … and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor…

i still wonder what was the significance of Assange carrying Gore Vidal's book when he was arrested (kidnapped) from the Ecuadorian Embassy.

Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#139

Post by FpUser »

jariel wrote: post #125
sudosysgen wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Proportionality is relevant in this, but I won't bother to respond to your fiction regarding historical events. You might want to ask the mass murdering regimes of those regions, many of whom continue to operate today, about those issues.

If you consider total amount of killed directly or as the result, maimed, displaced, impoverished you are right on par or ahead.

Re: Survivor of CIA Torture and Rendition Supports Assange at Extradition Trial

#140

Post by justanotheranon »

aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote: post #129
pravda wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gore Vidal pointed this out many years ago: "There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt — until recently … and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor…

I really wonder what Vidal would be saying today. I guess it would probably be something similar to Noam Chomsky, who is voting Democrat this year because the policy differences are so stark. https://the.ink/p/noam-chomsky-wants-you-to-vote-for

Chomsky denied the genocide of Pol Pot and defended the Khmer Rouge to score points against CIA and Western Imperialism.

start here on page 19 of Chomsky's book he wrote in 1979.

https://libcom.org/history/chomsky-pol-pots-genocidal-regime...

Chomsky was dead wrong about his heirarchy of languages and he set back computing by 50 years. He has also been wrong about geopolitics, since he ends up supporting the very Western Imperialism that he rails against.

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